Mets chaotic week continues with shocking roster moves

What a week it has been for the New York Mets and it's not even the weekend yet. They were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers, blowing two of the three games late, to fall to a season-worst 11 games under .500. Towards the end of the final game, reliever Jorge Lopez was ejected and threw his glove into the stands. Chaotic postgame comments followed, and the Mets DFA'd him that night.

The Mets finally got back into the win column on Thursday night, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks, but President of Baseball Operations David Stearns decided that the Mets needed a roster shake-up.

Stearns shook up the roster in a big way, making three moves, a couple of which came as a big surprise.

Mets shake up roster with several shocking moves

ESPN's Jeff Passan was first to report that the Mets were sending down both Christian Scott and Brett Baty. Seeing Baty go down was expected, as the Mets needed a backup middle infielder and he had been outplayed by Mark Vientos, but Scott was a bright spot. That one came out of left field.

The Mets promoted Scott, their No. 3 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, to the majors in early May and he was, for the most part, brilliant. The right-hander allowed three runs or fewer in four of his five starts and completed six innings in three of the five outings despite receiving no run support.

Scott had looked like one of the best starting pitchers in this Mets rotation but was sent down for a couple of reasons. First, because of the Mets' trip to London, they'll have three off-days in the next ten days. They had been using a six-man rotation but there's no need for them to do so with so many off-days coming up.

The second reason has to do with innings. The right-hander has never thrown more than 87.2 innings in a professional season, and that came last season. He's already at 53 innings this season combining his outings with AAA Syracuse and the Mets, and that's only through May. Limiting his innings a bit could potentially help keep him healthy, which is, of course, the ultimate goal.

Scott will presumably be back sometime soon, and will look to build off a strong start to his MLB career.

The second shocking move New York made saw them DFA catcher Omar Narvaez. Like Baty's demotion, this move was a long time coming. Giving Narvaez a player option in the 2022 offseason never made sense and he proved that by slashing .154/.191/.180 without a home run in 28 games this season while letting the opposition run wild against him when he was behind the plate.

Opposing base stealers were successful in 33 of their 35 attempts against Narvaez, and one of those caught stealings was a pickoff. He had just one hit in his 32 Citi Field at-bats this season, which is also hard to fathom.

Taking Narvaez's place on the active roster is Luis Torrens, who the Mets acquired in a deal with the New York Yankees according to SNY's Andy Martino. Torrens has just a .643 OPS in parts of six MLB seasons and has not appeared in a MLB game this season, but will almost certainly be an upgrade defensively over Narvaez, which is most important for a catcher.

The timing is a bit curious as New York's starting catcher, Francisco Alvarez, is nearing his return, but Torrens at least for the short-term gives the Mets an upgrade behind the dish.